September Old Town Books Cooks! Preserving with Domenica Marchetti and Cathy Barrow

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Join Old Town Books Cooks! Cookbook Club as we break into preserving with Domenica Marchetti and Cathy Barrow, using Marchetti's Preserving Italy and Barrow's Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Practical Pantry as our guides.

About the authors:

A former newspaper reporter, DOMENICA MARCHETTI is the author of six cookbooks on Italian cooking, including Ciao Biscotti and The Glorious Pasta of Italy. Her articles and recipes have been featured in The Washington Post, Food & Wine, Fine Cooking, and Cooking Light, and on Leite's Culinaria and NPR.org's Kitchen Window, among others.

CATHY BARROW is a food writer, cooking teacher and pie maker. Barrow writes the “BRING IT” column in the Washington Post’s Food section. She has written for the New York Times, Garden and Gun, The Local Palate, Modern Farmer, Saveur, Southern Living, NPR, and National Geographic, among others. Cathy lives near Washington, DC, with her husband, Dennis and two terriers. Her first cookbook, Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry, won the prestigious IACP Award for best single-subject cookbook.

About the cookbooks:

*Purchase the cookbooks online or at the shop and mention cookbook club to get 15% off!*

Preserving Italy - Capture the flavors of Italy with more than 150 recipes for conserves, pickles, sauces, liqueurs, infusions, and other preserves

The notion of preserving shouldn’t be limited to American jams and jellies, and in this book, author Domenica Marchetti turns our gaze to the ever-alluring flavors and ingredients of Italy. There, abundant produce and other Mediterranean ingredients lend themselves particularly well to canning, bottling, and other preserving methods. Think of marinated artichokes in olive oil, classic giardiniera, or, of course, the late-summer tradition of putting up tomato sauce. But in this book we get so much more, from Marchetti’s in-person travels across the regions of Italy as well as the recipes handed down through her family: sweet and sour peppers, Marsala-spiked apricot jam, lemon-infused olive oil, and her grandmother’s amarene, sour cherries preserved in alcohol. Beyond canning and pickling, the book also includes recipes for making cheese, curing meats, infusing liqueurs, and even a few confections, plus recipes for finished dishes so you can savor each treasured jar all year long.

Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Practical Pantry - In Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry, food preserving expert Cathy Barrow presents a beautiful collection of essential preserving techniques for turning the fleeting abundance of the farmers’ market into a well-stocked pantry full of canned fruits and vegetables, jams, stocks, soups, and more.

As Cathy writes in her introduction, “A walk through the weekend farmers’ market is a chance not only to shop for the week ahead but also to plan for the winter months.” From the strawberries and blueberries of late spring to the peaches, tomatoes, and butter beans of early fall, Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry shows you how to create a fresh, delectable, and lasting pantry—a grocery store in your own home.

In addition to canning techniques, Practical Pantry includes 36 bonus recipes using what’s been preserved: rugelach filled with apricot preserves, tomato soup from canned crushed tomatoes, arugula and bresaola salad with Parmigiano-Reggiano and hazelnuts, brined pork chops with garlicky bok choy.